Devotional Contemplative Tantra

Join David as he interviews Sally Kempton, one of the most authentic spiritual teachers around. Sally discusses her teachings of devotional, contemplative tantra, and deep meditative practices. She encourages you to embrace meditation for the love of it and turn it into an everyday practice.

Transcript

Hey,

Insight Timer listeners,

Welcome back to another episode of Energy Matters.

We have a very special guest for you today,

The legendary prolific author and spiritual teacher,

Sally Kempton.

She's been at this for over 40 years.

She lived in an ashram.

She taught meditation all across the world.

She's lived in India.

She writes for the Yoga Journal,

Has many incredible books,

Including meditation for the love of it.

And she took some time out of her day to share her wisdom with us.

So we are here to share it with you.

Before we jump into the episode,

Just giving a shout out to myself.

He's also here,

My co-host.

Recently I came out with a course on Insight Timer called Letting Go of Attachment.

It's a 10 day course.

If you're interested,

You get a chance and you want to come sit meditate with me.

It's right there in the course section of the app.

Thank you guys all for listening and let's jump into it with Sally Kempton.

Hey,

Energy Matters listeners and YouTube viewers.

We have a very special guest today,

The legendary spiritual meditation teacher,

Sally Kempton.

Welcome,

Sally.

Thank you.

And of course,

Cody.

Hi Cody.

Hello.

Hello.

Nice to meet with you guys.

Yeah.

So,

So nice to have you.

And we've been exploring your books,

Which you have so many,

And your YouTube videos and all of your work.

And Cody and I were just discussing before you got here how impressed we are with your body of work.

And you've been teaching it for,

It sounds like over 40 years at this point.

Yeah.

And for those who are listening,

Who are maybe new to your work and maybe have been meditating,

But haven't been fully exposed to all of the cool stuff that you've been doing all these years.

Can you just start off by telling us a bit about what it is that you teach,

Maybe in particular,

Devotional contemplative tantra and what that means?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I teach,

Well,

The basic teaching of tantra,

Which is of course fairly pervasive in the modern world,

Is an understanding about energy as the basis of everything and a recognition that in meditation,

Especially,

It's really important to be inclusive in terms of what we allow into our meditation.

So in classical yogic meditation,

The idea is to make your mind as still as possible and the general,

Which is of course a great instruction.

But for most people,

It's quite daunting since actually getting your discursive mind to shut up entirely is very difficult,

Takes a long time,

Involves a lot of repression,

Suppression.

Sleeping pills.

Yeah.

Sleeping pills,

Snogging yourself on the head,

Quail eggs,

Other perhaps not so healthy alternatives.

So for me,

The life transform,

Well,

There were two life transforming kind of interventions that came into my meditation.

One was a transmission of Shakti from my teacher,

Which is very much a basis of the meditation I teach.

It's based on the understanding that when you meditate in the presence of someone whose own meditation has cooked,

Has opened,

Has brought about awakening,

Then there's a lot of help and transmission that comes to someone who practices with a teacher who kind of has a lineage mojo.

And that was how I learned meditation from a very powerful enlightened teacher.

And the second piece of it that I found very important is really this inclusive understanding about your own mind,

Your own awareness as really the microcosmic form of the creative intelligence that is all that is.

And if you understand your mind to be basically made of energy,

Made of Shakti,

As we call it,

Then you can look at your thoughts,

You can look at your images,

You can look at all the stuff that comes up when we're especially first getting into meditation.

You can look at it all as being part of your meditation,

As being held in the awareness of your meditation.

And this attitude,

Which I consider the foundational tantric meditation attitude,

This attitude seems to remove the over-structuring,

The kind of fear,

The feeling that you may be doing it wrong,

Helps to create a field within which meditation can be both dynamic and still.

So that recognition that everywhere your mind,

As the tantric text says,

Everywhere your mind goes is Shakti,

Everywhere your mind goes is divine conscious energy.

Therefore,

Even though mind hygiene,

Mental hygiene,

Positive thinking,

All those interventions are really helpful and positive,

At a certain point it's really necessary to understand that your meditation can encompass whatever arises.

Still be meditation,

And that seems to be what lets us go deep.

That's great.

Yeah.

Pardon me.

Yeah,

When you talk about that,

It makes me think of something I see happen a lot in meditators,

Which is when they start to meditate,

It's not an all inclusive sense of self that they're stepping into,

But trying to get rid of or fix,

Like,

I become the project,

I'm the problem,

Or certain parts of me are,

And that level of meditation,

While there may be some benefit in self-discovery,

It also seems to kind of work against us on some levels.

Yeah,

I agree.

And I do think that most of us begin meditation as part of our ongoing self-improvement project.

That's one of the main motivations for doing any kind of inner work,

And it's a good thing.

But many years can go by while you try to fix yourself,

Improve your meditation,

Feel discouraged about it,

Whereas if you just,

Well,

I'll tell you the moment that really changed it for me.

My teacher,

Whose name was Swami Muktananda,

Who was one of the first enlightened Indian teachers to come to the West in the 70s,

And once when we were,

He was leading meditation,

And he said,

You have to stop chasing the mind trying to get rid of thoughts.

Your mind is simply a limited form of the creative consciousness that creates infinite worlds,

And therefore your mind is going to create infinite worlds on the inside.

So the way to look at them is to say,

Everything that arises in my mind is an aspect of Shakti,

And he was a devotional tantrika,

So he would say it's an aspect of goddess.

So if you look at your mind as goddess and everything that arises in it as being part of goddess,

Then your attitude towards your mind will automatically become more naturally reverent,

And your mind will start to behave,

Your mind will start to give you a break,

And I've found this to be true.

You have to remember it.

I mean,

You can't use it as an excuse to just let yourself ruminate indefinitely.

It's a particular type of intervention where you kind of loosen the reins,

But you look at what's coming up in your mind as an aspect of sacred energy,

And somehow this seems to loosen the attachment,

You know,

The tendency to follow thoughts,

The tendency to get taken out by thoughts that we don't find acceptable.

And it seems to,

You know,

I think so much of meditation is relaxing into the field of awareness.

So if you can find a way to have a relaxed attitude without being completely relaxed in your attention,

In other words,

To be attentive yet deeply relaxed,

Your meditation is going to be far more satisfying than if you're simply being attentive or simply being relaxed.

And I think when a lot of people first learn meditation,

They see it as like turning the mind down and almost holding it hostage into silence.

What you're saying your teacher taught you and what you've come to realize is that you want to almost treat the mind as this goddess energy.

I've never heard it that way.

I really like that.

But treating it as a sacred space rather than something to say,

Hey,

Shut up.

Right.

Something to command and conquer,

Yeah.

And that's that point that Cody made about don't treat your mind as something to command and conquer.

Treat your mind as honor your mind,

You know.

How did you get there?

How did this start for you?

Well,

I had a fairly typical for my generation spiritual awakening in that it happened during an acid trip when I was in my 20s.

And it was actually the first time I'd ever taken acid.

It was I was having one of the usual,

You know,

Highly visual acid trips.

And then I was listening to a record to a to a actually an incredible string band record,

If you know that band from the 70s and 80s kind of an eccentric English folk band.

And they were singing.

Well,

They're worth they're worth hearing their funky but kind of wonderful.

And they were singing a song the lyrics of which went this moment is different than any before it which you know is of course a great spiritual cliche,

But I was on acid and it just went right into my heart and and I suddenly the you know presence opened and I realized that everything is made of love.

I turned to my boyfriend and I said,

Oh my God,

There's only love.

He said haven't you ever taken acid before?

So but I but that it completely shifted my understanding about life and you know,

Like like many people who whose first guru was a psychoactive drug was the beginning.

You know,

I I came down as one does but with the recognition that my life could have a different set of priorities than what I was.

And you I heard you tell this story before in more detail where you mentioned that you correct me from wrong where you sense the entire universe inside of you.

That was a different experience.

I had a I had a few different kinds of awakening including a sort of classic recognition of you know of the of my true nature as pure witness awareness and you know seeing that that what I thought thought of as me was actually not me and then I had that experience that you describe which I describe in my book meditation for the love of it which happened in an early retreat with my teacher where the we were sitting in meditation and my awareness just became sort of swallowed everything.

I think a lot of people especially of the generation like your generation have had acid trips,

But that doesn't lead and they've had maybe awakenings,

But that doesn't lead everybody to pursue a spiritual path and seek out a teacher.

Were you already spiritually minded or just inquisitive?

What what kind of got you really moving from that moment of you know an awakening to take action and pursue it and learn more and do what you've done?

A really good question.

I mean it it I wasn't spiritually minded at least not that I knew of that.

I think that the social political situation of that time had a lot to do with it as you know,

I see the current political situation as being not being really a slightly more evolved repeat of what was going on in the early 70s when I had my first awakening.

That is to say the left had you know kind of splintered deeply post 1968.

Nixon was president.

You know,

We were moving into Watergate.

There was intense disillusionment at least in my circles about political possibilities and that had been kind of the center of my belief system was that you know,

That progressive political action was the you know,

The most important thing you could do other than art since I was a writer.

That's familiar to right now.

I would say this is this moment reminds me so much of my early days of awakening.

So it was almost as though the disillusionment with life as I had known it combined with that opening into love and opening of you know of deeper possibilities just really turned my life around.

It was a kind of a classic what William James calls conversion experience.

You know,

I fell off my donkey and saw the light and at that time the only I mean strangely enough,

There was a 14 year old guru who was kind of a joke in New York at the time living across the street from me.

And and there was Swami Satchidananda's yoga studio a couple of blocks away on 13th Street.

And you know,

And a few other and you know,

Of course,

There were many Buddhists and other small groups of teachings in in New York,

But nothing that I knew of that spoke to me.

And so I ended up getting involved in it with a Western spiritual group that called Arika that that actually taught a very integrated view of what spiritual progress is about including,

You know,

Philosophy,

Yoga,

Physical practice,

Meditation practice,

Mantra practice.

And it's and I spent about a year and a half there and it gave me what I consider a very,

Very,

Very good education in the different components of spiritual work and sort of held me while I went through these initial processes.

And at that at a certain point I had another awakening which involved,

You know,

A huge infusion of light in a sense of Kundalini rising from the base of my spine up to the crown.

And it was very disconcerting actually,

You know,

As because I really didn't know anything about it.

And and in the middle of that experience,

I heard my I heard the name of Swami Moktananda who was a recognized Kundalini master,

Not Kundalini yoga in the yogi bhajan sense,

But the more traditional,

You know,

Kundalini yoga of a what's often called a Siddha tradition,

A lineage of gurus who who have the capacity to awaken students.

And I he happened to be coming to Los Angeles where I was living and he I went to see him and ended up spending the next 29 years with him and in his lineage.

Oh,

That's incredible.

Yeah,

Sally for those who are listening,

Watching,

Going,

I want to have an awakening experience like that.

It's the question is where can they get the acid?

Ask Michael Pollan.

That's true.

Saw him on Colbert talking about that.

More seriously,

For those who maybe their awakening isn't going to come from taking acid or something like that,

But they're looking for that opening.

What would you suggest to a student like that?

Really good question.

I mean,

There is the the classic advice when the student is ready,

The teacher appears.

I do think that what you have to do is just get started.

And because I belong to a,

You know,

To traditions that really really privilege the role of the subtle meditative energy that we call Shakti in the meditation process.

I would always suggest that people get involved with a teacher or a tradition that also recognizes Shakti.

And many of these are in Hatha yoga lineages because Hatha yoga,

You know,

Not all Hatha yoga,

Obviously,

But there are some Hatha yoga lineages which work with Shakti and where that type of awakening takes place.

And there are also teachers who,

You know,

In what's currently called the direct path Ramana Maharshi tradition,

I'm sure you've had several of those teachers on this show who,

You know,

Who help people awaken.

I would I call it the intellectual center awakening where you which which was one of my early awakenings where you recognize that what you think is me is actually not me that,

You know,

That which you see the difference between the small self egoic sense of who you are and the deep awareness that is ever the ever present who you really are that kind of awakening,

Which I think is more common in the Western world these days.

Correct me if I'm wrong about this,

But it's what I hear about seems to you know,

It there there seem to be a number of lineages certainly in California that in which you can sit with a teacher who will kind of talk you into recognizing consciousness as the as the truth and which you you might have the opportunity to get it.

And that's a very good start as long as you don't as long as you don't get stuck in in a merely intellectual recognition of your yourself as consciousness,

As long as you really allow it to become embodied.

Can you explain that a little bit what that looks like if so someone knows like am I stuck?

How do I know if I'm stuck?

What is that?

What does that stuck look like?

I think recognizing your own stuckness is not not always that easy,

Which is why teachers and peers and reading is is very useful.

But there's a type of spirituality in which our intention is to rise above and beyond our mundane life to disengage from the body to to experience what you know,

In the Kundalini tradition,

We call the upper chakras.

So so and and that that that approach to practice will often get you to the point where you can recognize your own awareness.

You can sort of pull back from your mind and from your body and especially from your emotional problems and realize that you are I always do this when I describe this that there is this this field that is holding field which often can feel very loving and embracing and which which is filled with with okayness.

It's it's stable.

It's ever present you recognize that this this is the deepest sense of you that you've ever had and that and you that you've had it all your life and you can you get to a point and I'm sure you you know,

You know this from experience where you can just you can de-identify with your your physical empirical personnel personal self and identify yourself as the awareness that holds and is present to experience.

And this is an extremely satisfying place to park and the where you get stuck is well,

First of all,

Thinking that you you know,

You have it together,

Which is always a mistake.

I find I tried to convince Cody that it also it is it is a position that allows spiritual bypass.

And I think that's a very interesting point that you're making is that you're passing that wonderful phrase that Chogam Trungpa created,

You know that where you just you know,

You just go okay.

Oh,

Okay.

I'm out of here.

I have awareness.

I'm completely detached from later.

Can you pay the electric bill?

Yes.

It's like using that the phrase like all is one or all is love as a way of denying what's real right in front of you and dealing with it,

Right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

And I think that's a very interesting point that you're making is that you're not reentering the body if you're not actually moving down past the heart into the lower chakras and really investigating the emotions and the physical feelings and often the traumas that you're holding in your in the first three chakras and often in your heart.

It's like you're trying to be partly an escape valve and I all four escape valves don't get me wrong.

I think that being able to you know,

To especially when you're in physical pain or emotional pain to be able to go okay,

I am consciousness.

So I'm not this is really really helpful and I so grateful that that I can do that.

I have found that there are deeper and deeper awakenings that that become possible when you're willing to occupy your own body and to recognize that that your body itself has wisdom that that that the mind just can't even begin to to make you aware of.

So it is intelligence.

So many ways it is intelligence.

It is intelligent.

Yeah.

And it's and it's instinct it's it's in an instinctual understanding of what's right that you can learn to cultivate but you can only learn to cultivate by by practicing with it.

You know,

It's it's not the same as as somebody going.

Okay,

I'm just going with my feeling.

It's more like actually learning to explore feelings and hold feelings and and really test the information.

And so you can learn to hear the signals for when the information that your body is giving you is is important and when it's just you know,

A passing thing.

Right.

Yeah,

There is a there is a difference.

I've noticed between feeling at the level of impulse versus feeling at the level of movement of energy like following the flow of it of that intelligence.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I lived in an ashram and in India for a long time and I thought I had it.

But if you had traveled back in time and found me in that ashram,

You probably noticed I was kind of floating above it all.

Yeah.

There was a time eating.

Yeah,

I hated eating to this day.

Eating kind of bothers me.

I see you're quite slim.

Yeah.

I have to do it every day multiple times.

I know.

And then again the next day.

And all these other things that go along with it.

With having a body.

Yeah.

You have to pay for the food.

It's absurd.

And you haven't need a place to sleep.

The reason I don't eat is actually is just because I'm cheap.

But yeah,

You would definitely have noticed I was just kind of floating up there when then I then I came back to the United States and realized,

Well,

I have to do all of these physical things and they're actually hard and I'm not good at them.

And that's more of a challenge than just sitting and meditating.

Like for me to sit and meditate all day was so easy.

It was almost easy to fall into this blissful state and just roll with it forever.

And then I found all the other stuff harder.

I think a lot of meditators out there hit this point as well.

When did you hit that awareness?

What was that like for you?

How did you navigate it?

Well,

I lived in an ashram for a long time and eventually I became a Swami monk,

Which meant that I occupied a privileged position where other people did a lot of stuff for me.

Oh,

Cool.

I want that.

Other people did my laundry.

Other people cooked my food.

And I eventually got to the point where I started thinking,

Oh my God,

I'm teaching people how to live their lives.

And I'm living in this utterly privileged and kind of unreal situation in which everything is taken care of for me.

And all I really have to do is give spiritual teachings and do my best to get along with other people,

Which is of course not always so easy.

Sounds good to me.

How long did that take to get to that?

I started feeling problematic to me.

Wow.

It took a while,

About 15 years in.

And part of it was because living in an ashram,

As you probably know,

Especially if it's a large ashram,

And especially if there's a living teacher,

Is quite challenging in many ways.

And it's not like a Cistercian monastery where everybody's silent.

There is a lot of interactivity.

There's a lot of interpersonal stuff that you have to deal with.

So you don't really feel like you're bypassing for a long time because you're so engaged in the challenges of living in a community.

And also the work I did,

Which was challenging in itself.

But there just was a point at which I actually started to feel this is hypocritical.

I mean,

I'm working with householders.

I'm working with people who have to pay their bills,

Who have adolescents who are driving them crazy.

And I'm living this life which is entirely focused on obvious spiritual practice.

So it just felt like I needed to step back into the so-called world.

And when I decided to travel with my teacher,

Which was kind of an ad hoc decision that I didn't realize would turn into my entire life,

I had made a promise to myself that my guru was quite old,

Or at least I thought so at the time.

I'm now older than he was.

Everyone's old.

Everyone's old exactly.

And I thought,

Well,

He won't be alive too long.

And it is a rare opportunity.

And he very much encouraged me to make this decision.

But I remember saying,

OK,

I'm going to return and deal with all the things that I knew I hadn't dealt with.

So it was like a sort of Damocles or ticking time bomb that eventually I had to face into and that I knew I would have to face into.

Because I'm an activist by nature.

I agree with David.

There's nothing greater than just sitting in meditation all day long.

Yeah.

And wandering around doing little zen sweeping.

Like a human cat.

Right.

Right.

But at a certain point,

You sort of think,

Well,

OK,

I'm in this body to be a human being.

And how am I going to be a deep meditator and practitioner and also deal with the challenges of being a human being,

And even in this relatively prosperous and pleasant circumstance.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I think Cody and I definitely,

Well,

One of the challenges we've been tackling and working with is we've both been teaching for years,

Obviously him longer,

You could tell.

But we've been,

You know,

As a spiritual teacher on your own,

When you're no longer part of a school or part of an ashram or a group,

You have to build your own business and,

You know,

Your own students.

And that's an entirely new thing to have to run that,

Run it almost like a business.

Right.

As a teacher,

Navigate that.

And I found that to be one of the most challenging aspects of it all,

But also very fulfilling in making it work.

I don't know about you.

What have you noticed in the more recent years as a teacher with all of that?

Well,

That's absolutely true.

You know,

That the challenge of actually finding the people that want to study with you and just managing communities is its own challenge.

And it took me a while to find an MO that felt useful for me and that didn't require a ton of marketing.

So because I'm not that great at it,

You know,

At marketing.

But most spiritual people aren't.

Yes.

You've noticed that too.

Yes.

Although we do have this podcast.

So that was a big thing.

Can you share Sally a little bit?

Oh,

Sorry,

Cody.

I was just going to say,

What does that MO look like a little bit for you?

How did you end up bringing that out into the world?

Well,

The big thing for me is I think it is for many people in the spiritual teaching coaching world was realizing that I can do classes online.

Or actually,

I don't do it so much online,

But on the phone with people from all over the country and all over the world.

So it meant that I didn't have to travel all the time and that I didn't have to have a scene where I lived,

Which having lived in an ashram for a long time and having been a public person in the ashram such that you can't,

You know,

When you're in that kind of situation,

You cannot walk out of your room without putting on your game face.

You know,

You are actually on all the time.

And I'm quite introverted.

So I live in essentially a retreat space and I don't teach where I live.

So,

In other words,

When I teach,

It's usually at a conference center or,

You know,

Or online or in a yoga studio and usually not,

You know,

Not in my neighborhood.

So but the online teaching,

Which has become quite large,

I mean,

Large,

You know,

Large enough.

It's not it's not massive,

But it's it's large enough so that people who who are,

You know,

Who I have a karmic connection to can find me and I can make a reasonable living and don't have to,

You know,

Your website where to my website.

Yeah,

My website,

Sally Kempton dot com has,

You know,

On the top menu,

It has this little section on schedule and there's and that includes the teleclasses.

I'm giving one now actually called The Goddess Empowerment,

Which is about how to connect and invoke Shakti in the form of several Hindu goddesses.

Very good.

You're giving one now like right now during like not this moment,

But yeah.

But you're also a writer and that being a writer certainly gets your thoughts and ideas out there.

I'm curious about you as a writer.

Do you find writing as a meditative process?

Is it is it a struggle?

Is it always been there for you?

Like what is your your process in writing,

Especially about spiritual topics?

Well,

Yes,

I I would say I'm a writer.

You know,

If I if I would describe if I could describe myself as only one thing,

It would be as a writer.

I've been writing since I was five and when I was younger,

It was the it was the way I tuned into the self to the to the deeper truth of my being.

Something about writing usually fiction in those days would would kind of open up this this space of enormous joy and contentment and inspiration and I I love I mean and the problem was I then I was a professional journalist for a while,

But I never there.

I just was not that interested in mundane things and subsequently realized so learning that I you know studying spirituality and yogurt topics and realizing that I could write about them was a huge gift for me.

One of the things I'm really grateful for is that is that it gave me a way to write that felt in integrity with what I what I love myself.

So so yes,

It's it's it's deeply satisfying and one of the things that I've learned about writing and spirituality is that writing or any form of art any form of anything that that that demands that you you mine a deeper inspiration is a wonderful path to you know a meditative state you can.

So I I recommend writing as a path.

It's a it's a beautiful beautiful thing,

Even if you don't think you're good at it,

Right?

I've never been good at it,

But I enjoy it and we have a we have a mutual friend and Randolph is a writing teacher.

Yes,

You get a chance to do a retreat with Dan Randolph if you want to write.

Although I went on one of her retreats and I wasn't told that it was an improv retreat.

Well,

I'm on stage moving around going.

This is scary.

Yeah,

David sent me a little video of like his first stand up because he's like a comedian at heart.

I had to do a comedy for Randolph.

Oh,

Fantastic.

Great.

That's so great.

It was cool.

Oh,

We know we have another mutual friend or acquaintance.

I don't know how well you know him,

But John Scher McKeever.

He owns Pilgrimage of the Heart Yoga and we saw you on his podcast.

He's a friend of mine.

Yeah.

Yeah,

He was on our show early on.

Yeah,

Sweet guy.

Yeah,

Very,

Very lovely guy.

Yeah.

Sally,

I have a question.

One of our audience they're listening on insight timer or through iTunes wherever and they may be used to doing these like 10 15 20 minute guided meditation.

Beginner stuff watching the breath maybe letting the mind settle.

You tend to be somebody to take people into the deep end.

So the question is for those listening who you know do are used to doing 10 20 minute meditations kind of lightly guided beginner ones are looking for that kind of next step into the deeper part of the pool into that deeper level layer of consciousness.

What do you teach in terms of taking someone into that space?

Do you teach them how to become aware of that Kundalini energy kind of moving up through the body or how does how does it work?

Well,

I would say the go to meditation that I teach is on the Sushumnanadi the central channel and and on the three centers that the the Mooladhara belly center with the heart the heart and the the center in the middle of the head.

So what I teach a particular set of practices which allow people to enter into the central channel,

Which is you know in in in the yoga texts to it.

Should I explain this or yeah,

And and maybe talk a little bit about the three centers too,

Because I don't know that any of us really know what that is.

Well,

The in you know in the yoga tradition and in actually in most of the Eastern yoga traditions,

There's there's the understanding that the subtle energy body which permeates pervades the physical body but also extends at least three feet beyond it.

You know actually has its own geography that corresponds to the physical body corresponds to the organs corresponds to the endocrine system and to the spinal column and the cerebral spinal fluid in the physical body.

And the you know in in the chakra in this seven chakra system,

Which is the one that we're we're most familiar with in the West,

You know,

There's the understanding that there are seven vortexes one at the base of the body one in one in the center of the pelvic area one in the.

Generally naval solar plexus area one in the heart one in the throat one in the center of the head it's between the eyebrows but inside not in the forehead and then when above the crown and what what I discovered and and this is not my personal discovery.

It's an understanding that is many spiritual teachers come to have come to is that the three main centers are the you know what's in martial arts is called the heart the heart and the center in the center in the head and then if you activate these three centers.

It basically activates all of your subtle bodies it activates your your inner being at at many several different levels.

And I can tell you what I feel that these centers hold in particular what gets activated when you when you really tune into them but but these the centers are connected along the subtle spinal column which.

In which the yoga tradition says is interpenetrated by three very,

Very subtle channels called the either the Pingala and the session or central channel the data and Pingala correspond to the nostrils and they are the pathways that.

The breath in which the breath and the prana move into the body and they but between them is is this much more subtle and difficult to reach channel called the Sashumna which means something like auspicious or you know.

Overmind channel there are different definitions of it as with many Sanskrit words but there is this in the in the yoga tantric tradition it said that when we go into a true meditative state a true Samadhi state.

What is actually happening is that our breath.

Stops moving through these two normal channels and goes into the Sashumna and at that point very often the breath becomes very slow and stops.

And this inner space space of the inner body begins to expand and you find yourself in a let's call it a non ordinary state or in a meditative state in a in the state of expanded awareness but it's deeply embodied.

You know it's it's it's it's not affected by the body it's like it's free of the body but it's inside the body and and this is shunanati can become it it's almost as though your body turns inside out it's you know it's it's like this the underlying awareness which has been hidden.

Starts to emerge and literally swallows up your body consciousness and it what the way that the yogic tradition that I'm part of describes this is is it's.

They say that it's all about entering the Sashumna the central channel so I teach meditation that's I teach it as a beginning meditation because you can approach it at whatever level of.

Of expertise you have acquired in which we practice with the breath begin by breathing with the sense that you're breathing in and out of the forehead and find this center in the middle of the head and then begin to breathe vertically.

So letting the breath flow down to the heart and back up and then down to the to the heart to the center of the belly and back up to the heart and as you practice this way your mind settles in it's a very good concentrated practice but eventually.

The the Sashumna opens and you you find yourself in in meditation in in the state of dhyana which I define as a spontaneous arising of the meditative state which I know you're very familiar with.

So when you're meditating in the Sashumna you it's like you you catch on to the wave of deeper your deeper being and and the practice begins to be spontaneous and you're carried as far inside as you as you can be present for you know which.

Obviously if you're if you haven't meditated a lot your capacity to stay inside is less than if you've practiced a lot but it's a beginning practice that that can become an extremely advanced practice because it at a certain point you surrender to the currents of energy and and they take you deeper and deeper into your subtle self.

So and I also teach a lot of of visualizations I mean I do teach I teach a lot of devotional mantra practice and goddess invocation practice and you know guided journeys so and and a certain amount of what they currently call non dual practice that is being aware of awareness so I have a fairly wide spectrum of ways I teach meditation.

Yeah that's great well over 40 years of practice and exploration I'm sure you have tremendous deep knowledge to share in a lot of different arenas that's really wonderful.

Well I experience it as I suspect you guys do as well I do experience meditation as a recreational activity as well as as a practice that you know that transforms you very deeply so I like to meditate and and and I think it's and I I've found as a teacher as I'm sure you have also that one size really doesn't fit all.

Right.

So in your mindfulness is not for everybody.

You know,

Concentrated meditation is not for everybody visual meditation is not for everybody mantra is not for everybody but if we play.

We find what hooks you,

You know what makes you want to meditate.

I love the title of one of your books meditation for the love of it is is a great title and statement that you do it because you enjoy it I like that.

I can't imagine you'd continue.

Right.

It's hard to continue something you don't find some aspect of it,

Or some form or expression of it where you can be in a place of enjoying it.

Yeah,

I know me.

So I had a degree in philosophy and moved to the Himalayas.

And so,

You know,

I was a meditator but I was intellectual and so they've been a dantic form and teaching was very attractive to me because it was so logical and such a straight shot to,

You know,

What seemed like enlightenment and I read all these,

You know,

Ramana Maharshi books and went down to the ashram and this is a good art and all of that and I,

And I absolutely loved it.

And then I got into more of the kind of healing intuitive side of things as well.

And I moved to Hawaii,

Feeling guilt.

Now this one's right.

And,

And then other one practices I got into,

And I realized there's always something missing in that equation,

Which was.

Yes.

That's a good way to put it.

That's a great way to put it.

Yes.

What do I think for me,

It took me years to ask that question.

Yeah.

Yeah,

Who am I,

I mean really who am I.

I'm this Vedantic nothingness.

That's the way.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Are you writing any more books?

I am.

I'm,

I'm about to,

I'm about to start another book,

But I'm not revealing what it's about,

Because I,

It's not fully cooked,

But it's,

It's along the lines of the Awakening Shakti book.

And,

You know,

It's a,

It's,

It's a book about higher energies and how they work inside human beings.

Nice.

Yeah.

Are there other spiritual teachers live that you look up to or you still enjoy listening to?

Well,

I do like Adyashanti,

Who I think is,

And I like Rupert Spira.

And I haven't really visited any of the current wave of,

Of charismatic Indian female teachers,

Although I hear that some of them are quite extraordinary.

But I think that there are a lot of really,

Really skilled spiritual teachers around who,

Who,

You know,

I benefit from having satsang,

Having satsang with them.

I haven't met a teacher that I want to enter into the kind of relationship that I had with,

With my guru,

Partly because he,

He was,

He was so big and so kind of all encompassing that I've never met anybody who has that quality.

So,

But I do think that there's,

There is enormous spiritual opportunity around these days.

Yeah.

Well,

Back when you started,

Back when I started,

There,

It wasn't like on every corner.

We didn't have the internet.

It was,

You had to kind of search around quite a bit to find a teacher and a teaching.

Yeah,

You did.

And you often had to go to India or go to Nepal.

Yeah.

Sally,

For,

Oh,

I was going to ask,

Cody,

Sally,

For those listening,

Wondering,

How does Sally meditate?

What does her day look like?

What does this spiritual meditation teacher spend their time doing?

Give us just a little tiny bit of insight.

Well,

I do a couple of hours of practice in the morning,

Which includes not that much yoga,

Just because my body's not handling it too well right now.

I do a certain amount of,

Of puja,

Of ritual,

You know,

In other words,

I do a little classical worship offering practice at an altar with chanting mantras and then I sit for,

Depending on how much time I have between an hour and two hours.

And then I put her around,

Go to work,

And then I meditate again,

Usually,

Usually in the evening,

You know,

Like for half hour or an hour or more if I get really into it before I go to bed.

So,

And the rest of the time I'm doing life.

I just did a retreat,

Which was more of a,

I just want to stop traveling retreat,

In which I spent a lot of time just wandering around.

Cooking and straightening my house and sitting on the deck spacing out.

And that was great.

You can call it open-eyed meditation.

I just,

I call it spacing out.

Right.

That's when creativity comes in,

Doesn't it?

Yeah,

It really does.

It really does.

So fascinating.

Sally,

So for all the meditators listening to this,

Going,

Well,

I want to do more with Sally,

I want to listen to her teachings,

Her meditations.

Where can they find you?

I know we have sallykempton.

Com,

Which is probably the home of most of it.

Yeah.

And then you also have,

I'll just speak for you.

Kripalu,

August 24th coming up.

You're going to be teaching there.

August 24th through the 26th,

Which is in Massachusetts.

You guys haven't been there.

It's a beautiful retreat center.

And then you're also teaching November 14th to December 12th.

That's almost a month worth on death and dying.

Where is that one going to be?

That's a teleclass.

So that's online.

And I'll also,

Let's see what else I can tell you.

Well,

My website has,

I actually have teleclasses available for download from my website.

A lot of them on texts of Kashmir Shaiva Tantra.

So the alternative to Vedanta philosophy,

The non-dual tantric philosophy called Kashmir Shaiva is the one.

Before we finish,

Can you explain that?

Sure.

Sure.

Well,

You know,

The difference between Vedanta and the Shaiva viewpoint is that in Vedanta,

The fundamental teaching,

As you know,

Is the physical world is a superimposition on consciousness and is therefore not quite real.

In Kashmir Shaivism,

The understanding is that the physical universe is appearing and dissolving inside this vast field of intelligence called Shakti or Chitti,

Which is a feminine form of the word awareness,

And that therefore every particle of the world is full of sacred energy.

So,

Well,

The sages of this tradition claim that they are the true non-dualists.

In other words,

That they don't make a separation between the world and the world and spirit.

They see spirit in all of it.

And it's a tradition that was supported by the kings of Kashmir from between the eighth and eleventh century,

And that has disappeared from Kashmir,

Obviously,

When the Muslims took over and even before.

But it's been,

In the mid-twentieth century,

Several European and American scholars kind of discovered the texts,

Which are really quite extraordinary,

As I suspect you know,

Very beautiful,

Poetic,

Radical.

And it's begun to be a thing in the modern spiritual world.

My teacher was one of those who kind of brought Kashmir Shaivism into the conversation in India and in the West.

So I teach a lot from those texts.

That sounds,

And correct me if I'm wrong,

But when you describe that,

That sounds an awful lot like kind of the idea of the holographic universe,

Where everything is in every piece.

Yeah,

Very similar.

And David Bohm's analysis of the holographic universe very much applies to the way the Kashmir Shaiva sages saw it.

David Bohm was a physicist,

I believe,

Who worked under Albert Einstein for a while.

He did,

And he was a student of Krishnamurti.

Right.

I've seen their talks together on YouTube.

They're amazing,

And I wish I was smart enough to fully follow them.

I know,

He's over my head too.

Yeah,

Incredible work.

And I mean,

That's another place where everyone can find you,

Which is where I've seen a lot of your work,

Which is on YouTube.

You have some great talks on there.

And also on YogaGlo,

Which I have about 60 meditations on the YogaGlo site,

Which is,

And on Gaia,

I've done a couple of things there recently.

Oh nice.

Yeah.

You're hanging out on the deck,

Having your retreat,

And you're everywhere.

I know,

All at once.

Yes,

Isn't the virtual world amazing?

Yes.

Yes.

Well,

Sally Kempton,

It's been so wonderful having you.

So delightful.

Yeah.

We have to reverse it.

I have to interview you guys.

We'd love it.

We'd love it.

Here are your stories.

Definitely.

It's totally been a pleasure.

Thank you.

Likewise.

For everyone listening and watching,

Thank you all for hanging with us this whole time.

I'm sure you got a lot out of this.

You can find Sally at sallykempton.

Com and all of her books on Amazon.

There's a wealth of teaching there,

So enjoy yourselves.

Keep meditating and we'll see you next time.

Thank you so much.

Thank you,

David.

Thank you,

Cody.

Thank you for your work.

It's very,

Very beautiful what you're doing.

Hey,

Everybody.

That was Sally Kempton,

And I can safely say I don't know that we've ever gone that deep down the path of meditation and what it is and how to meditate as she just went.

That was really fascinating to hear about the different centers and the depth of going inward that Sally's able to talk about,

Articulate,

And really just give a great kind of picture of.

I had a really,

Really great time listening to that and really kind of contemplating and looking at my meditation practice in a new way after talking to her.

Yeah,

Now we have to re-record our daily om chakra series because she taught us an entirely new tool connecting the hara,

That solar plexus space,

To the heart,

To the third eye.

That was a really powerful teaching that she had there for us.

And,

You know,

There are so many spiritual teachers out there,

Meditation teachers,

Who some of them talk like they're talking out of a textbook.

Sally Kempton is not one of them.

She talks purely from experience,

And I love that.

I never feel like she's just hitting me with information that she learned from someone else.

It's always,

It feels like this true natural wisdom,

And I really appreciate that about her.

She has an incredible sense of humor,

Lightness,

Humility to her,

And I think a lot of us inspire to get to that place after 40 years of that kind of work.

So thank you,

Sally,

For being here.

And if you guys want to find her,

Sallykempton.

Com would be the place.

There's another place called Amazon.

You can get her books there.

I've never heard of that.

Amazon is it?

Yeah.

If you get Amazon Prime,

Enlightenment comes with Amazon Prime.

That's right.

Yeah.

And she's going to be teaching at Kripalu coming up,

And she's got lots of great stuff going on online.

We so appreciate her time.

I feel every episode we do,

I'm like,

How the hell do we get to interview these amazing people?

I know.

It's like I never would get to meet this person.

Yeah.

Do you know how not cool we are that you're here anyway?

They have a special place in their heart for you.

They do this is they do the scholarship type of podcast.

This is pro bono work.

Sally does this on Sunday.

Thank you guys for listening.

As always,

You can find us at energymatterspodcast.

Com,

ITunes,

Stitcher,

SoundCloud,

YouTube,

A little bit of Facebook.

YouTube now,

Which is so exciting.

It's great to see us out on YouTube.

So easy to access and you can see the video.

So if you're listening to this by audio,

You can do the video.

If you want to see just how goofy we really are,

Watch us on YouTube.

That's right.

So guys,

Thank you so much for listening.

We will see you next time on energy matters.

Enjoy yourselves.

Keep meditating.

Thank you,

Everybody.

Reviews

Thank you for this interview. I love Sally Kempton, so much wisdom. I love her book Awakening Shakti 🙏🏻✨💜

Amazing. So inspired to learn more from this teacher. Thank you guys, for conducting the interview and asking such valuable questions.

Always uplifting to listen to David with Cody interviewing or talking/meditating. Always cheeky laughter. Thanks 🙏🏼

Your questions were so insightful and it was a joy to listen to Sally’s warm spirited and in-depth answers. You two are also so funny and light hearted. I loved the entire podcast. Thank you💜